Sonos permanently drops the price of its Era 100 speaker and Ray soundbar

The Era 100 was primitively $249.

Sonos is lowering the terms of 2 products successful an effort to boost hardware income amid a continued slump. The company’s Era 100 astute speaker and entry-level Ray soundbar present some outgo $199. That’s a $50 driblet for the Era 100, which launched astatine $249. And it’s an adjacent much important $80 chopped for the Ray; the soundbar was released astir 3 years agone astatine an MSRP of $279. Both products person regularly been disposable for little during income and retailer discounts, but present the terms driblet is permanent. (Credit to my friends successful the Sonos subreddit who spotted this; I’ve present confirmed it with Sonos directly.)

The Era 100 is Sonos’ mainstream location talker and improves upon the anterior Sonos One (and Play:1 earlier that) with stereo sound, line-in and Bluetooth audio support, positive much intuitive carnal controls. Its archetypal terms felt reasonable, but astatine $199, it’s an adjacent amended woody and a bully gateway into the Sonos ecosystem.

I’m usually little speedy to urge the Ray. Unlike the much costly Arc Ultra and Beam (Gen 2), it lacks HDMI connectivity altogether — and frankincense offers nary Dolby Atmos situation sound. Still, the compact soundbar easy outperforms built-in TV speakers, truthful it’s a coagulated no-frills enactment for smaller rooms oregon secondary TVs. (Some owners person besides travel to bask it arsenic a table speaker, but that’s not the superior purpose.) Former Sonos CEO Patrick Spence said successful past net calls that the Ray underperformed Sonos’ aboriginal expectations. $199 is surely a fairer terms for what you’re getting.

Sonos remains locked successful an effort to amended the show and reliability of its mobile app aft last year’s embarrassing stumble. The institution is releasing updates to the bundle astatine a dependable cadence and continues to support a nationalist Trello committee of upcoming fixes. Sonos precocious cancelled what was to beryllium its adjacent large hardware release, a streaming video player, successful different motion that it’s reprioritizing the merchandise roadmap and getting backmost to basics.